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Why encourage student smoking?
?The proposal reported elsewhere on this page, from Ward 4 councillor Jack Ballinger and the Township Bylaw Department, to create a special smoking area for Uxbridge Secondary School students, presumably on Township property, to the north of the school on Fourth Avenue, raises a whole lot of fundamental questions.
All the proposal does, in essence, is shift the current problem from one location to another - the litter problem, and the problem with Joseph Gould elementary students, many of whom use Fourth Avenue as a route from Barton Farms or other areas north of Brock Street. Instead of shifting the problem, why not eliminate it altogether?
The School Board has obviously banished smoking from school property for a reason, or several good reasons, the most important of which is to discourage a major negative impact on their students’ health. On what planet does it make any sense to discourage smoking in one area, and blatantly foster it 20 feet away?
It seems to us the litter problem at Third and Planks is easily solved. Provide Board-funded or Township-funded litter barrels on all four corners (it’s difficult to understand why this hasn’t happened). Do random spot checks a couple of days a week, and slap the maximum fine for littering on any student who doesn’t use the barrels.
But litter is by far the lesser issue here. Far more important is the issue of the health of our young people. It’s one thing to allow smoking in public for adults who presumably have made this senseless choice after some consideration. It’s quite another to actually go so far as to provide a designated space for school children to pursue a vicious habit that could easily destroy their health not very far down the road.
We debate about whether to allow soda pop, chocolate bars or potato chips in school vending machines for health reasons, but we don’t blink an eye when a student walks across the street from the school and lights up a cigarette? That’s crazy.
As for Bylaw Officer Andre Gratton, whose defence of his proposal is that “smoking is going to happen one way or another”, it’s difficult to believe that he is: a. a parent; or b. in law enforcement. Almost any human activity, illegal or otherwise, is “going to happen” somewhere, sometime, but if we believe it’s wrong, there’s no excuse for deliberately setting aside a venue for it to take place. Instead, we should be aggressively seeking any possible solution to make the activity difficult (including making it illegal!)
The school and the Board have abrogated their responsibility by doing nothing to protect the health of their students, or the property of their neighbours. The federal and provincial governments have done nothing, either, by continuing to preach against smoking while taking no meaningful action to actually stop it.
So if anything’s to be done, we suppose it’s up to the municipality. We suggest (and this is well within the Township’s power) that in the interests of public health, a bylaw be drafted which forbids smoking within 500 metres, maybe even a kilometre, of any school between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. on any school day. Problem solved.
And still install the garbage cans for the chocolate bar wrappers.
